The Fifth Trumpet
1 The fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. o The key for the shaft to the abyss p was given to him. 2 He opened the shaft to the abyss, and smoke came up out of the shaft like smoke from a great furnace q so that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. r 3 Then locusts came out of the smoke on to the earth, s and power was given to them t like the power that scorpions have on the earth. u 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree, v but only those people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. w 5 They were not permitted to kill them but were to torment them for five months; their torment is like the torment caused by a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them. x
7 The appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. y Something like golden crowns was on their heads; their faces were like human faces; 8 they had hair like women’s hair; their teeth were like lions’ teeth; z 9 they had chests like iron breastplates; the sound of their wings was like the sound of many chariots with horses rushing into battle; 10 and they had tails with stingers like scorpions, so that with their tails they had the power to harm people for five months. 11 They had as their king the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, ,a and in Greek he has the name Apollyon.
12 The first woe has passed. There are still two more woes to come after this. b
The Sixth Trumpet
13 The sixth angel blew his trumpet. From the four horns of the golden altar c that is before God, I heard a voice 14 say to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels d bound at the great river Euphrates.” e 15 So the four angels who were prepared for the hour, day, month, and year f were released to kill a third g of the human race. 16 The number of mounted troops was two hundred million; I heard their number. 17 This is how I saw the horses and their riders in the vision: They had breastplates that were fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow. The heads of the horses were like the heads of lions, and from their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. h 18 A third of the human race was killed by these three plagues—by the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur that came from their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, because their tails, which resemble snakes, have heads that inflict injury.
20 The rest of the people, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands i to stop worshiping demons j and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, k which cannot see, hear, or walk. l 21 And they did not repent of their murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.
9:1–6. The fifth trumpet (9:1–12) is the first of three woes (8:13), or laments, that signal a heightened intensity in the cycle of plagues. If the first four plagues affected the natural world—the earth and trees, the sea, the rivers, and the sky—the last three plagues will attack humanity more directly. When the fifth trumpet is blown (9:1), a chain of events starts but centers on the actions of a dense swarm of demonic locusts unleashed from a bottomless pit or abyss (i.e., a prison for evil spirits; cf. Lk 8:31; 2 Pt 2:4) (9:2–3). The swarm is reminiscent of the eighth Egyptian plague (locusts, Ex 10:12–20) but also possibly the third (gnats, Ex 8:16–19) and fourth (flies, Ex 8:20–24), since locusts, gnats, and flies were all insects thought to originate in the belly of the earth and could cover the land like a blanket of darkness (Ex 10:15; Jl 2:2, 10; cf. Rv 8:12).
9:7–12. Certainly these are no ordinary locusts, since they are described with the combined features of animals, human beings, weapons of war, and other fantastic images from the apocalyptic imagination (9:7–10; cf. Jl 2:4–7). The angel of the abyss, whose name is Abaddon (Hebrew for “Destruction”; cf. Jb 26:6; Pr 15:11) and Apollyon (Greek for “Destroyer”), commands the army (9:11). This is a spiritual battle. The pain the demonic locusts inflict is due to the unseen and hidden consequences of sin (Dt 28:27). Evil and suffering, like the locusts, have a human face (9:7–8). When the veil is lifted on the destiny of rebellious humankind, John sees how those who embrace the fallen values of the secular world are tortured from within by the very greed, corruption, lust, bitterness, anger, loneliness, and inner turmoil that are generated from life apart from God.
9:13–19. The sixth trumpet, or second woe (9:13–21), evokes several images: the tenth and most devastating Egyptian plague (the death of the firstborn, Ex 12:29–32), the attempt by Pharaoh to rout Israel’s escape with his chariot army (Ex 14:7–14), and his unrepentant response to God’s judgments (Ex 8:15, 32). There is also a strong literary and theological connection between the fifth and sixth trumpets. The fifth trumpet’s swarm of countless demonic locusts (9:7–10) shares characteristics with the sixth trumpet’s demonic armies of 200 million riders (9:17–19). Also, the sixth trumpet vision consummates the process of inner spiritual decay described by the fifth. What began as moral corruption and material excess in the fifth trumpet culminates in the sixth, with the wages of sin leading to actual death (cf. Rm 3:23). The fire, smoke, and sulfur—whose red, dark blue, and yellow hues parallel the breastplate colors of the cavaliers (9:17)—are OT metaphors for the fatal judgment of the ungodly and their eternal separation from God (Gn 19:24; Is 34:9–10; Ezk 38:22).
9:20–21. First-century Jewish reflections on the exodus event posited another purpose of the plagues: to bring Pharaoh and the Egyptians to repentance. But, tragically, instead of repenting, “he [Pharaoh] hardened his heart” against God (Ex 7:13, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7). John sees this tragedy of hardened hearts repeated in the human response to the seven trumpet plagues. Nonbelievers continue to worship idols that can neither see nor hear nor truly help them in their hour of need (9:20). As God strips away every idol through the plagues until no alternative sources of security are left, we witness the ultimate expression of pride and human sinfulness: people, even in outright misery (9:6), would rather die than turn to God for deliverance (9:21).